Friedrich Merz is the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and the frontrunner for Chancellor of Germany, according to polls in the lead-up to this month’s election.
Merz recently said, via an interview with the Wall Street Journal, that Elon Musk must face “consequences” for daring to voice support for the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), a conservative political rival.
Merz stated: “What happened in this election campaign cannot go unchallenged.”
He added that the response could be political or legal. He also left open the possibility of going after Tesla, which has a gigafactory in Berlin, saying, “I am deliberately leaving the consequences open for now.”
The CDU leader opined that Musk needs to be “investigated” for his remarks, stating:
”The fact that someone from outside Europe intervenes in a national election campaign in this way is new.”
Yet the EU and its member states routinely intervene in other nation’s elections.
Just recently, the Romanian election results were overturned/annulled after a nationalist won the most votes, due in part to pressure from Western Europe.
And opining isn’t “intervening.”
It says a lot — and nothing good — about Merz and those like him that they want to quell dissent and silence the speech of any who deign to disagree with them.
Public and private figures alike have opined on elections around the world since time immemorial. Threatening to investigate and sue those who dare to oppose you, and to punish the companies they may run, proves that you, not them, are the threat to democracy.
This kind of thuggish and intolerant behavior is especially problematic in Germany, given its history.
While Merz flouts possible “consequences” for Musk, his repressionist attitude should have “consequences” for himself and his party. Consequences that should redound to their detriment and AfD’s benefit.
Especially in light of the most recent European terror attack, this one in Munich, Germany. An Afghan migrant asylum seeker rammed his car through a crowd of protesters on Feb. 13, killing a woman and injuring 30, including a child who is in critical condition. The migrant, who, you guessed it, has a history of multiple arrests for theft and drug dealing, fought with police after the deadly attack.
Perhaps, instead of assailing a man who has arguably done more to advance civilization than any other, Merz should consider espousing policies that would actually protect his own nation’s citizens from violent alien criminals.
If he does not (and he likely won’t), Germans would be well advised to bring on the other party.
On Saturday afternoon, two men were seriously injured outside a café on Ewaldstraße in Herten. A 53-year-old (Lebanese national) who lives in Herten was quickly arrested by the police.
Am helllichten Tag in Herten NRW. Da wird der Streit mal eben mit einer Axt beglichen. Ist dort die Waffenverbotszone noch nicht spruchreif geworden. Tut mir leid, aber diese Verordnungen der jetzigen Politiker kann man nur noch mit Galgenhumor ertragen. pic.twitter.com/yUeDVK5JUj
Several men clashed at around 4pm. The exact involvement of each man is still under investigation. Weapons were also used during the altercation. A 28-year-old man from Herten (German national) and a 22-year-old man from Herne (Turkish and Belgian national) were seriously injured. Ambulances took the men to hospital.
It is not yet possible to provide any information on the background to the altercation. The police have video footage, which has also been circulated on social media. It shows a previously unknown man hitting a man with an axe of some kind. The police are searching for this man.
Farishta Jami who has been found guilty of two counts of engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorism Counter Terrorism Police
West Midlands Police has reissued a mugshot of a convicted Islamic State terrorist after she complained about not wearing a niqab in the original photograph.
The force initially released an image showing her full face and hair, but later published a second photograph showing only her eyes beneath a navy blue niqab.
The mother of four, who planned for her children to become martyrs for the terror group, was described in court as an “observant” Muslim.
Matthew Brook KC, Jami’s barrister, told Leicester Crown Court on Friday that she had experienced “considerable distress” because of the photograph showing her full face.
“Reports of the verdicts yesterday used an image of my client, released by the police, in which her head wasn’t covered,” Mr Brook said. “This has caused her some considerable distress and the police are going to release a different image. We would request that is used instead.”
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, presiding, said she could not issue an order to make the use of the second image compulsory. The judge left it to the press to decide which image to use.
The court heard Jami had saved £1,200 to fund flights to Afghanistan, where she planned to join the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK). She shared extremist material on social media and joined multiple pro-Daesh channels.
Officers told Leicester Crown Court she had researched weaponry and gathered information about the assembly and disassembly of an AK-47 rifle.
The prosecution revealed she had stored approximately 7,000 videos, with several showing children being used as suicide bombers.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb noted: “The online communications give every indication of a woman firmly committed to the cause and in possession of extremist propaganda, espousing radical views and intent on influencing others.”
Afghanistan-born Jami moved to Britain in 2008 to live with her husband in the North West. She later relocated to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 2023 after her marriage became violent, the court heard.
The former dinner lady was in court to be sentenced on two counts of preparing acts of terrorism between September 1, 2022, and January 10, 2024. The hearing was adjourned to allow the probation service to prepare a pre-sentence report.
The force released the second image showing Jami in a niqab, despite her having sat through the three-week trial wearing a hijab that showed her face.
The British man who U.S. Vice President JD Vance mentioned in an address to European elites Friday in Germany thanked him for referencing his 2022 arrest.
On Saturday morning, Adam Smith-Connor released a 53-second video calling out the hypocrisy of “UK authorities” while heaping praise on Vance for bringing what he called his “crazy” story to the attention of the world.
“I just want to say thank you to Vice President Vance for raising my plight in front of world leaders. Nobody should be criminalized for their prayers, their mere thoughts,” Smith-Connor began.
“My case has exposed the UK authorities in front of the world as they allow thought police to prosecute peaceful, innocent people, for what’s going on in their minds.”
“I will be appealing my conviction in July and pray that justice will be restored to Great Britain. Silent prayers are not a crime. Not here, not anywhere,” he concluded.
I’m humbled & grateful to JD Vance,a fellow brother in arms veteran,for talking about my case yesterday.I had the privilege of serving alongside the Americans in Afghanistan.They were incredibly generous & I’m so grateful to them for the support now.
Smith-Connor’s arrest was reported on by LifeSite’s Dorothy Cummings McLean when it first occurred. At the time, he had been taken away for violating a controversial “bubble zone” law that prohibits persons from standing within 200 meters of an abortion facility. Smith-Connor noted Friday on X that he was standing outside in silence “because I was praying for my son who died in an abortion.”
Thank you VP Vance for speaking about my case.For anyone who thinks he’s exaggerating I can assure you he is not. I was convicted because I was praying for my son who died in an abortion. If I’d been praying for a friend who died in Afghanistan I would not have been convicted. https://t.co/3z8kUpDtm2
An army veteran, Smith-Connor was given a two-year probation sentence and ordered to pay £9,000 ($11,700) for violating the law. Before going to trial in 2024, he publicly commented that his arrest was a symbol of a nation in decline.
“It is unfathomable that in an apparently free society, I am being criminally charged on the basis of my silent thoughts,” he said.
Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom International is helping Smith-Connor with his appeal.
A MESSAGE FROM ADAM SMITH-CONNOR:
"I'm overwhelmingly thankful to Vice President Vance for raising my plight in front of world leaders.
"Nobody should be criminalised for their prayers, their mere thoughts – this case has exposed the UK authorities in front of the world as… pic.twitter.com/KggyvBZPNt
Smith-Connor is not the only Brit to be persecuted for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, co-director of the March for Life UK and campaign director for 40 Days for Life Birmingham, was arrested for doing the same thing. She has repeatedly been fined, harassed, and wrongly arrested by police on multiple occasions since 2022.
In March 2023, the U.K. Parliament expanded local “buffer zone” laws around some abortion facilities to cover every abortion facility in England and Wales effective October 2024.
Help Us Defend Britain. From as little as £4 per month you can become an NCF member: / newcultureforum You’ll help us continue in our mission whilst also receiving a range of benefits, including exclusive content, discounted or free tickets to our events and invitations to private events. Join here: / newcultureforum
Smiling Syrian Jihadist Kills One Boy, Injures Several More in Villach, Austria Stabbing Attack – Was Pictured Smiling after Killing Innocent Boy. Photo: X
By Andrea Widburg
In the last three days, two Muslim attackers, one originally from Afghanistan and the other from Syria, have killed three people in Germany and Austria and injured scores of others. It’s clearly jihadism, although we can expect the usual people to whitewash what happened. And while I grieve for the victims, I never lose sight of the irony that these two nations, having rid themselves of Jews, now die at the hands of the Jews’ other enemy.
A 2-year-old girl and her mother have died two days after they were injured in the car-ramming attack on a labor union demonstration in Munich, police said Saturday.
A 24-year-old Afghan man who came to Germany as an asylum-seeker was arrested immediately after the attack on Thursday. Prosecutors said Friday that he appears to have had an Islamic extremist motive, but there was no evidence that he was involved with any radical network.
Thirty-nine people were hurt in the attack, and police said on Friday that two of those were very seriously injured. On Saturday, Bavaria’s state criminal police office said the young girl and her mother, a 37-year-old woman from Munich, had died of their injuries, German news agency dpa reported.
If you need a hint of that “Islamic extremist motive,” after the attack, the killer screamed “Allahu akbar”—the jihadist cry—at the police.
The attacker in Austria was a bit more subtle about his jihadist motive after he stabbed five people, killing a 14-year-old boy and seriously wounding two others:
A 14-year-old boy has been knifed to death after a Syrian refugee randomly stabbed passersby in the Austrian city of Villach today, leaving four others injured.
The horror unfolded just before 4pm local time in the city center, near the main square, before the 23-year-old suspect was arrested.
Spine-chilling images of the arrest show a grinning man with his index finger raised as police officers surround him with weapons.
Two men are said to have sustained minor injuries, while two other men suffered from more serious wounds. The victims were aged between 14 and 32.
The suspect, who has not been named yet, is a Syrian national with legal residence in Austria, according to police. He had been living in a center for asylum seekers and was not known to authorities.
Thus, both these killers were waging a religious war against the civilian citizens of Germany and Austria.
The irony is obvious. In the 1930s and 1940s, Germany and Austria were Ground Zero for the Holocaust. While the main killing fields may have been in Central Europe, Hitlerism and Naziism found their home in Germany and Austria. They were the ideological centers of genocidal antisemitism.
This Austro-German ideology had devastating effects just within those two countries. In 1933, Germany’s Jewish population had been 525,000. By 1950, it was reduced to 37,000. Over the same period, Austria went from 191,000 Jews to 18,000.
Meanwhile, across Europe as a whole, two out of every three European Jews had been slaughtered, with the remainder heading for British-mandate Palestine (now Israel), America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, South America, and South Africa. Today, only Israel and America are still safe for Jews.
But back to Germany and Austria. Beginning in the 1960s, their women stopped having babies, so to replace their declining population, they invited in Turks. Turkey had been secular since the 1920s, making this seem like a safe bet, and, mostly, it was. However, we all remember what happened in 2015.
Obama’s unchecked Arab Spring destroyed the tyrannies holding tribal hatreds in check across the Muslim-Arab world. Civil War began in Syria, with devastating consequences for the whole region. In response, Germany’s Angela Merkel, in a suicidal display of self-righteous compassion, invited the entire Muslim world into the EU. Most of the EU population smugly followed her lead.
They didn’t realize, though, that the Muslims, who hate the Jews as much as the Nazis did, weren’t like the Jews. Muslims don’t assimilate, and their Koran, unlike the Torah, has no problem with murder.
So, it is that for many years now, there’s been a slow jihad taking place across Europe. And in just two days, that jihad took three lives in the two countries that took the lead in erasing Europe’s Jews.
A two-year-old girl and her mother have died after a car was rammed into a group of people in Munich on Thursday.
The 37-year-old mother from the city and her daughter are the first deaths from the incident, German police said on Saturday.
Police said at least 36 people were injured on Thursday morning when a car ploughed into a crowd taking part in a trade union demonstration.
A 24-year-old Afghan national known as Farhad N was detained at the scene.
The suspect has lived in Munich since he arrived as an unaccompanied minor in 2016. Although his asylum application had been rejected, he lived in Germany legally with a residence permit and had no previous convictions.
He is being investigated for 36 counts of attempted murder, as well as bodily harm and dangerous interference with road traffic.
Prosecutors said he appeared to have had an Islamic extremist motive, though there was no evidence he was connected to any radical network.
A trans-identified male in Norway recently convicted of beating his female partner to death with a baseball bat has had his sentence reduced on appeal. Despite the crime being committed by a male, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), which is subsidized by the government, has described the killer as a “woman.”
On the evening of November 27, 2023, a 22 year-old female who went by the name Oliver Ravn Rønning was beaten to death with a baseball bat at her apartment in Porsgrunn, which she had just moved into days before with her partner after having met via an LGBT dating app that summer. Rønning is a female who identifies as a man, while her partner, who Reduxx will refer to as Jonas, is a 19 year-old male who identifies as a woman.
The couple had just been married five days prior to the murder.
A trans-identified male is in custody for the brutal murder of his trans-identified female partner in Norway.
The suspect, who identifies as a "woman," physically abused the victim, who identifies as a "man," in the weeks leading up to the murder.https://t.co/rvGDaaWLCT
Leading up to the November 2023 murder, Jonas had previously been reported to police multiple times for domestic violence against Rønning.
According to police reports, on October 12 Jonas had pinned Rønning down, and strangled her as he beat her head into the floor. While being questioned by police on her injuries, Rønning explained that her head was hit so hard that she temporarily lost hearing in one ear. She also stated that she had hoped to seek emergency care, but was prohibited from doing so by Jonas. Following the incident, police assessed Jonas as being at a “medium risk” for recurring violence.
Two weeks later, police were again called to the scene after Jonas had engaged in the same style of physically abusive behavior. After this, authorities re-classified the trans-identified male as having a “high risk of violence.”
However, despite being aware of ongoing abuse, authorities did not take appropriate action to prevent the homicide – a matter which has now been taken up by Marit Storeng, head of prosecution investigations in the Bureau of Police Affairs.
Attorney General Helene Holtvedt, when initially handing down a sixteen-year prison sentence at the Telemark District Court, was convinced that Jonas killed Rønning for attempting to end the relationship. Holtvedt stated that no mitigating factors ought to be taken into account, and that the killing was a “brutal act committed with great intensity.”
Two court-appointed experts, psychologist Karin Susanne Nordby Johansen and psychiatrist Ove Westgård, testified that they believed Jonas was likely to commit a violent crime again in the future.
Oliver Ravn Rønning (22), a female who identified as a man, was killed by her male spouse, who identifies as a woman, in November 2023. Photo: NRK
However, Jonas’ defense attorneys, Heidi Ysen and Tore Moen, appealed the murder conviction and requested an acquittal on the claim that the trans-identified male had beat the young woman with a bat in self-defense. Jonas attempted to claim that it was in fact Rønning who had been abusive towards him during the course of their brief relationship.
“She has admitted that she beat Oliver to death,” said Ysen, referring to the male defendant with feminine pronouns. “She has been doing that ever since she was arrested, but it was in self-defense.”
The judges in the Agder Court of Appeal disagreed with the acquittal request, and noted that, “Violence, threats of violence, and social control of the other are a repetitive pattern of action in the defendant’s relationships.”
Despite this, the Court of Appeal reduced Jonas’ sentence from 16 years to 14 and a half years.
The Institute of Forensic Medicine determined that Jonas struck Rønning in the head at least seven times. The victim’s mother witnessed the brutal murder of her daughter from outside of the apartment, having run to the window when she heard the young woman crying out in pain.
Rønning’s mother was aware that her daughter was in an abusive relationship and had tried to convince her to leave. On the night of November 27, they had returned to the apartment in Porsgrunn so that Oliver could pick up her bank card, code chip, phone and laptop.
“Jonas” in 2021.
After the young woman rang the doorbell, Jonas appeared with a baseball bat and beat Rønning to death just inside the entrance as her mother ran to the window and rapped on the glass desperately, begging him to stop.
News outlet Kragerø Blad has reported that Jonas “began to dress in girls’ clothes” while in high school, and was described by those who know him as someone who “could become enraged over little things.”
Some Norwegian sources have speculated that both Rønning and Jonas were once patients of a prominent gender clinician who was recently deemed “unfit to practice responsibly” by the Norwegian Health Authority. Rønning’s parents confirmed that their daughter was given testosterone by Esben ‘Esther Pirelli’ Benestad, a clinician who himself identifies as transgender, and who had his medical license revoked over malpractice issues related to minors. But Østlandsposten reported that Jonas had begun illicit hormones without medical supervision just before the slaying.
The murder has received significant attention and media coverage in Norway. However, the language used to describe the case has perplexed some readers. Many news reports have altered language used to refer to both the victim and suspect, or have described the case as one in which a woman violently beat her husband to death, obfuscating the sexes of those involved completely.
Yet in official records, the deceased 22-year-old victim is registered as a woman, while the trans-identified male convicted of murder is registered as a man.
The graffitied wayside shrine in the Montiggl forest (Photo: Schützenkompanie Sepp Kerschbaumer Eppan)
While walking through the Montiggl forest, two members of the Sepp Kerschbaumer Eppan shooting fraternity made an annoying discovery: a wayside shrine and a bench had been smeared with political slogans.
Flag lieutenant Armin Gurndin and marksman Manfred Werth did not take long, however, and together they took action to remove the unsightly graffiti and restore the place to its original state.
The action was recognised in a Facebook post by the shooting fraternity , which not only thanked the two dedicated members, but also made an appeal to the general public: ‘Please show consideration for our nature and our cultural assets! Respect the work of those who are committed to preserving our beautiful environment.’
The diligent marksmen removing the graffiti (Photo: Schützenkompanie Sepp Kerschbaumer Eppan)
When asked, the captain of the Eppan shooting fraternity Maximilian Schmid, commented on the incident:
‘Two of our shooting fraternity went for a walk with their children and discovered that a wayside shrine had been smeared with political slogans. They immediately took care of the matter and cleaned it up. It is our concern to renovate and preserve religious objects in particular. Nevertheless, it is worrying that we as a society are always being asked to respect other cultures, while our own culture, cultural assets, traditions and customs are being damaged and defiled in this way. It is truly tragic. Other representatives of the people, who often rail against us, should take a leaf out of our book – we don’t just talk, we also act.’
What is particularly explosive about the incident is that it was not a case of random scribbling, but of politically motivated slogans. The bench was daubed with the words ‘Free Gaza’, while the provocative statement ‘Jesus was a Palestinian’ could be read on the pedestal. Such an act of vandalism is not only disrespectful of public property, but also a deliberate provocation.
The incidents once again raise the question of how to deal with politically motivated graffiti in public spaces. While freedom of expression is a valuable asset, the smearing of religious and cultural sites is a transgression that must be penalised.
The shooting association hopes that by raising awareness and taking a common stance against such acts of vandalism, such incidents can be prevented in the future. The appeal remains: Those who demand respect must deliver respect themselves.
